Millions of years ago, early man painted scenes from life, showing the animals and people that they venerated. Inside Egyptian tombs great stories of life and death were depicted through images of farming, hunting, ceremony, wars and gods. Throughout history evidence of human existence has been painted, carved and scratched on surfaces, marking places that have been touched by our hands.
Modern graffiti in the same way tells stories, celebrates heroes or simply proclaims ‘I was here”.
The recent era of graffiti art emerged out of America, taking off in the 1970s when people wrote their names as ‘tags’ all over New York. Tags, marking the territory of gangs or ‘crews’ are highly decorative signatures placed in prominent locations.
In cities around the world murals and graffiti art have illuminated buildings and neighbourhoods, enlivening the visual landscape and creating a vibrant atmosphere.
Our production CODE features graffiti by Manchester based artist kELzO who created his first tag in the 1980s. kELzO has created work internationally and nowadays commercially as well. For us he has helped to re-create an inner city housing block complete with tagged walls and skateboarding designs.
His very special contribution to the show is a graffiti wall, complete with trials bikers, slogans and images in a neon rainbowful of colours.
This graffiti wall was first shown at our ’10 Years In Motion’ anniversary exhibition and is now touring with the show. We’re encouraging everyone to come and admire kELzO’s amazing artistry and to share it by taking a selfie against the wall and posting with another tag – #CodeSelfie.
Check out our interview about the making of the graffiti wall with kELzO below, and find out more about him on his website
Where can you see the wall? See the CODE tour dates